9月中國外貿回暖，但增長隱憂未散

????如果市場對明顯的好消息都無動于衷，那說明狀況確實不妙。

????由于擔心全球經濟放緩步伐過快，各國股市上周均陷入恐慌。因此，人們可能盼著，世界第二大經濟體——中國的外貿數據能超出預期，在本周給大家注入些許樂觀情緒。

????今年9月份，中國出口同比增長15.3%，高于8月份9.4%的增速，比12%的預測值也高出不少。對美國和歐洲市場的發貨量均增長了15%左右?？紤]到德國、法國和意大利等歐洲國家的經濟已幾乎陷入停滯，對歐出口的增長看來成果尤為顯著。

????然而，亞洲股市周一仍跌跌不休，部分原因是人們擔心上述數據可能有些靠不住——這種擔心也不是第一次出現了。上證指數和日經指數分別下跌了0.4%和1.2%。

????具體來看，9月份中國內地對香港出口同比猛增34%，而8月份對香港出口剛下跌了2.1%。這在一定程度上表明，中國出口數據的增長很大程度上可能并非源于真實的出口貿易，而是源自變相外匯市場投機的影響。

????中國的資本賬戶控制很嚴格，只允許根據實際貿易需要來購匯和結匯。因此，內地企業經常向自己的香港子公司虛開發票，制造有名無實的進出口交易，以便擴大或縮小自身對外匯市場波動的風險敞口。澳新銀行（ANZ）分析師指出，對香港出口的增長“正值過去幾個月人民幣再次升值”。

????不過，中國進出口數據的另一面，顯現出了更令人鼓舞的信號——進口在8月份下跌2.4%后，在9月份同比增長了7%，但上升原因可能并不如中國政府或西方經濟學家所愿。在很大程度上，帶動當月進口增長的是原油以及（用于煉鋼的）鐵礦石進口增加。中國政府正努力向內需驅動型經濟轉型，而上述數據實難作為轉型的有力證據。

????今年，中國政府的目標是保持約7.5%的經濟增長率，而國際貨幣基金組織（IMF）仍維持對中國今明兩年經濟增長率分別為7.4%和7.1%的預測。IMF上周下調了對全球大多數經濟體的增長預期，其悲觀預測成為引發股市下跌的原因之一。許多分析師擔心，房地產泡沫破裂會導致中國經濟出現更加急劇的減速。（財富中文網）

????譯者：Charlie

????You know things in the markets are bad when they don’t even react well to what appears to be good news.

????Fears that the world economy was slowing down too fast threw global stock markets into a funk last week, so it might have been expected that better-than-forecast trade data from China, the world’s second-largest economy, would have injected a bit of optimism into everyone’s Monday morning.

????China’s exports rose 15.3% on the year in September, accelerating from a rate of 9.4% in August and comfortably above the 12% expected. Shipments to the U.S. and E.U. both grew by around 15%, a particularly decent clip in the case of Europe, where Germany, France and Italy have all but ground to a halt.

????But Asian stock markets continued to sell off Monday, partly because of fears–not for the first time–that there may be something fishy about the numbers. The benchmark Shanghai index fell 0.4%, and the Japanese Nikkei fell 1.2%.

????Specifically, exports to Hong Kong leaped 34% on the year in September, having been down 2.1% in August. That suggested to some that much of the improvement in the data might not be down to real exports as such, but rather to disguised bets on the foreign exchange market.

????China’s capital account is tightly controlled and only allows foreign exchange to be bought or sold when needed for real underlying trade. As a result, mainland businesses often fake invoices to subsidiaries in Hong Kong to generate phantom exports or imports when they want to take on, or reduce, exposure to swings in currency markets. Analysts at ANZ noted that the rise in exports to Hong Kong were “coincident with the renewed renminbi appreciation in the last few months.”

????But there were more encouraging signs from the other side of the trade data. Imports rose 7% on the year, having fallen 2.4% in the year to August, but perhaps not for the reasons either Beijing or western economists would want. Much of the increase was due to more purchases of iron ore (for steel) and crude oil–hardly clear evidence of the kind of rebalancing towards domestic consumption that the authorities are aiming for.

????China’s government is trying to sustain a growth rate of around 7.5% this year. The International Monetary Fund, whose gloomy predictions last week were one of the triggers for the market sell-offs, left its forecast for this year and 2015 unchanged at 7.4% and 7.1%, respectively, even while it downgraded it forecasts for most of the rest of the world. Many analysts are concerned that the collapse of a real estate bubble may lead to a sharper slowdown.